Perfect example

So often when I go for a walk, I notice something that prompts a creative thought. But of course I don't bring a notebook with me, and I don't have a smart phone, as yet, to speak into. By the time I get home, and deal with this or that, the thought is gone.

Also, even if I write down the kernel of insight, if I don't put it to use within a month, it's as good as lost. My notebooks are not searchable by topic or keyword, and my memory of the approximate date of a jotting fades with time.

But here's one from my walk today. For decades, newspaper delivery boxes are the same everywhere--plastic squared tubes, open at the receiving end. The only difference is in the color and the newspaper name on the outside. Then today I saw one for the local Herald that was fitted with a plastic hinged cover. What a good innovation! I take it to mean that it has finally gotten to them, and to enough of us, that a knotted plastic bag keeps the paper from getting rained on, but creates tons more plastic bags, made from petroleum, that can't be re-used. Unless you have more talent unknotting them than I have.

This solo newspaper box may be the leading edge of a trend, or maybe not, but I'd like to think it is. What's the thought, then?  Well, I tend to think that human behavior is similar whether it concerns big issues, or little ones, and so if I find an example of a little thing, it might help illustrate a pattern--like, for the longest time, it seems impossible to ask that we do something better than throwing plastic bags at a problem, and then eventually we change. Maybe an insight like that might give me more patience.